Imagine
a fundamentalist tent-meeting somewhere on the dusty plains of
Oklahoma or Texas without the Devil? a spluttering preacher at the
pulpit with nothing about which to shout and frighten people?
Preaching the actual teachings of Jesus -- so far as we know them,
about peace and toleration -- wouldn't cover rental payments on the
tent and electric organ.

That little
thought-experiment offers genuine insight into the nature of
American fundamentalism as well as insight into the terrible new era
of perpetual war ushered in by that fine Christian gentleman, George
Bush.

There is little
doubt that the nature of a person's religious universe shapes and
orders his or her understanding of the physical one. We know the
Catholic church for centuries fought scientific discovery, certain
that questioning ancient preconceptions about nature also questioned
aspects of the supernatural. This way of looking at things continues
into the twenty-first century, especially in the gulag of creepy
places that is George Bush's America, places where they discuss
topics like the Mark of the Beast in hushed tones.

It was that sly,
clever Voltaire who declared, "If there were no God, it would be
necessary to invent him." A slight altering of his words tailors
them to the American experience. Simply remove the word God and put
Devil in its place, for, although America is sometimes called a
God-fearing nation, Devil-fearing is nearer the truth.

For many years,
America enjoyed the blessing of having Communism against which to
rage and threaten. It made for a balanced, harmonious universe:
America as God's Kingdom, ready with sword and buckler to defeat the
Evil One, and all those other nations out there providing an unsaved
mob to fill America's tent and contribute to the mighty battle.

Communism as Evil
One played to rave reviews for decades, but all good things do come
to an end, including the planet itself if you embrace the tortured,
perhaps psychotic, visions of the Book of Revelation.

America's new
Official Evil One is a little difficult to define, but some
ambiguity likely serves the cause well. After all, those Americans
who believe in speaking in tongues, as does the current Attorney
General of the United States, don't specify the languages. Any
babble will do. It is clear, however, that America's new Great
Awakening has to do with Islam and people wearing strange headgear.
In the humble, but direct, language of places like the Midwest and
Texas, it's about turban-heads. Unlike godless Communists, this
newly discovered slithering mass of evil believes in God, but it
might just as well not since it calls him by the wrong name and
reads the wrong holy book.

Well, burning
people alive was a specialty of the competing churches in Europe
after the Reformation, a charming custom that Puritans brought to
the land that would become America. The practice has gone through
many changes and refinements, and it is jealously retained by
America's Hi-tech Army of Roundheads. As I write this, they are
using helicopter gunships to burn and blow up women and children in
Fallujah.

I came across a
fascinating passage in Richard Rhodes' excellent history, The
Making of the Atomic Bomb:

"One of Roosevelt's first acts was to
appeal to the belligerents to refrain from bombing civilian
populations. Revulsion against the bombing of cities had grown in
the United States since at least the Japanese bombing of Shanghai in
1937. When Spanish Fascists bombed Barcelona in March, 1938,
Secretary of State Cordell Hull had condemned the atrocity
publicly…As war approached, revulsion began to give way to impulses
of revenge…"

America, as we
know, went, in a short time, from revulsion at someone else's
bombing to fire-bombing a number of cities and atomic-bombing two
others. Before the ashes had cooled on a million or so innocent
victims of air raids, that nest of vipers, the Communists, was
released on the world. A long series of bloody, largely pointless,
conflicts culminated in the holocaust-bombing of Vietnam and
Cambodia. Hell, what's a few million peasants when they might be
demon minions of the Evil One?

John
Chuckman lives in Canada and is
former chief economist for a large Canadian oil company. He writes
frequently for Yellow Times.org and other publications.